10 Movie Stars Who Should Never Promote Anything (Ever)
4. Katherine Heigl
There arent many actors with the reputation for thoughtless, ungracious rudeness that Katherine Heigl's developed over the years. Shes gone on record as belittling and badmouthing Knocked Up (her only genuine hit as a movie actress) and Gray's Anatomy (the show that made her a star). Infamously, she withdrew her name from consideration for the 2008 Emmy ballot after winning Best Actress for Grey's Anatomy the previous year - something pretty much unheard of for a one-time winner:
I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention. In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials.
Of course, her reduction in screen time on Grey's Anatomy that year came following her request for a lighter schedule on the show so that she could spend more time with her family. But then she'd previously criticised the long (and perfectly normal) hours required to shoot a network television drama, noting that their first day on the sixth season was. "I'm going to keep saying this because I hope it embarrasses them. A seventeen-hour day, which I think is cruel and mean."
That was on Letterman, one of the most-watched talk shows in American history. Her publicly stated opinion of Knocked Up - that her character was a b*tch and a killjoy and that the film paints the women as shrews; as humourless and uptight - is a perfectly valid criticism of the film, except that these issues would have been obvious on the first read of the script. Similarly, that doesn't explain why she carried on going for identical uptight, humourless killjoy roles in romantic comedies in the following years.
Some say her reputation is half-deserved, half the fault of her domineering manager, Nancy Heigl - her mother. That doesn't explain her interviews, however. Heigl's public persona is so toxic, she appears to have nosedived her own career. Her own publicist described her PR strategies as diarrhoea of the mouth and dumped her, refusing to represent her any longer.